Where Three Roads Meet

by Salley Vickers

  — And the capacity to think. My thoughts often return to the befuddling creature. The man who took Laios’s place with his wife in his bed, as reward for solving the meaning of the sphinx’s conundrum, never solved the deeper riddle.

  — Oh, there’s always another story!

  — You see, Doctor, he was too ready with answers. The answer to the riddle, which he gave us all so breezily, was “man”, but he never considered how the title applied to him. Know thyself. Then know that you are a human being, a member of the species of mankind. So know first and foremost that you do not know, and what you claim to know is almost certainly a means of distracting yourself from what you really know.

  — Which ten to one you will choose not to know. Repression is a means of staying alive. Until it stifles us, of course.

  — Repression or diversion, Doctor? There is more than one way to skin a cat. The joke is that my own longing was to unknow. I knew what it was like to “know” and it had worn me to a ravelling. Take it from me, the unexamined life is well worth living.

  — I would take issue with that.

  — Ah yes, Dr Freud. But Nothing in excess. That was the other Delphic motto. Or to put it in other words, don’t try to know too much. The oracle named Socrates the wisest of men because “he knew that he didn’t know”. In any case, I – or whatever it was in me that might have taken note – did nothing; let them stew in their own juice. Gave them time.

  — Time is often the best thing you can give anyone. I could wish to have a little more of it myself.

  — You have given me your precious time, Doctor, and I am grateful.

  — My dear man, it is the greatest pleasure. You pass the time most agreeably.

  — Agreeably or not, time passes. And if I chose not to see what was before my sightless eyes, during the years between the swaggering Corinthian’s arrival in Thebes and the advent of the troubles, it was because my own motto was: Let well alone. When all was said and done, what business was it of mine? They were happy, Oedipus and Jocasta. It was a good match, he full of buck and bustle and the queen with the reins of the city at last in her hands. And the poor creature must have been relieved to be rid of that old brute, her first husband, who never cared for women in the first place. And her virile young second husband looked up to her, for which she must have given thanks.

  — Remind me of the age gap?

  — Not so much that it mattered: sixteen years, and she a handsome woman. And he admired her, Doctor. No doubt about it. He was proud of her and the position her love had granted him. It gave him authority and stability, which he must have craved.

  — Firm ground to stand on?

  — And she could handle him, as she never could the other husband. Calmed him down, soothed him when he got in a state, which he was inclined to do. Which makes you wonder, with the red hair, how she could have missed the resemblance. Did I mention the hair? Copper red and with the temper to match. But no one spotted its significance, or so it seemed.

  I might have done, but then I wasn’t looking. It gives me sympathy for her. Of course she didn’t want to see what was before her eyes. Bear in mind what she’d done. Naturally she would want to forget it. She must have believed she’d got away with it.

  — We all hope that!

  — And you see, my dear Doctor, her new husband knew what he was doing; or seemed to. Think of the boost it must have given her when this cocky young know-it-all turned up. After all she had been through, a passionate man who knew what he was doing and what he wanted would have swept her off her feet and swept away nagging fears. He must have seemed like the gods’ gift. Which of course he was, in a sense.

  But you need a long spoon to sup with a god. Speaking of supping, I should mention Pelops.

  — Tell me, if it’s relevant.

  — Tell me what is not “relevant”, Dr Freud. Isn’t everything grist to your mill? Young Pelops was dished up alive by his father in a stew for the gods.

  — You know the Christians eat their god as a mark of respect?

  — No arguing with taste! Fortunately for Pelops, the guests divined what they had been served before he could be consumed. But one of them, Demeter, was abstracted by the loss of a beloved daughter and took a bite out of the boy’s shoulder which they couldn’t restore. Young Pelops had to make do with a substitute, and understandably the experience soured him. And it was the maimed Pelops’s son whom King Laios abducted and carried off to Thebes as his catamite. It was a bad family, his. In a way, it all began with that rape.

  — Ah now!

  — I guessed that might put fire in your belly, Dr Freud. Sex has a place but take it from me it is only part of the story. Though I grant you it must have been hard for Laios’s young queen to be set aside for a boy, and she so ardent. She was desperate for a child too. It was her hankering that sent her husband, that first time, to the oracle.

  — When you saw what you told me of before? Forgive me, but it doesn’t take Sigmund Freud to see that it was your own father you wanted to kill when you had that hallucination in Delphi.

  — And why not? He had murdered my mother and had taken his mistress into our house in her place. And had packed me off and out of it for good.

  — Adding insult to injury. In fact a classic case of…

  — Yes, Dr Freud. But before you jump to your conclusion, others had their parts to play in this sorry tale. When none of her seductive arts worked on her tepid husband, the queen got him drunk and that was how she conceived. By guile. And a bit of help from the insidious deity of intoxication. Dionysos was reborn in Thebes, of one of Laios’s ancestors. And Dionysos is an inveterate stirrer. He had a finger in the pie too.

  — It is always a family matter, a complex.

  — Whoever, or whatever, lay behind the child’s conception, his father never wanted him, to be sure. But think how she must have done to go to such lengths to conceive. And that’s another mystery, given what transpired.

  I have puzzled so often about this, Doctor. Was it fear of her husband that made her act as she did? So…not out of character, exactly, for she was not a squeamish woman, no shrinking violet, and in that sense, in the sense of being ruthless enough, it was in her to do what she did. But it was flying in the face of nature.

  — A valid point. Only in a very abnormal state of mind does a woman place the safety of her husband above that of her newborn child.

  — It must have been the case that her abominable husband grew so savage when he learned the sex of the child she had inveigled him into fathering that she felt bound to do the deed that seemed to be called for to dowse his rage, anaesthetised her own heart and then put it all behind her.

  — Or tried to!

  — Or tried to. Poor lady. You can tell how she longed for children. She had four of them, straight off, by her second husband. And even he, by all accounts, was something of a child to her. You should have seen them together – not that I could, but I was told. She used to ruffle his hair. His copper-coloured hair.

  So, ask yourself this, Dr Freud. How could she not – in the evenings as they sat together chatting, in the quiet of their own quarters, laughing, sharing the little jokes and private pleasantries of a comfortable married couple; or later, in bed, as he took her in his arms and entered her body – have recalled another small-statured man with the same temper and copper-coloured hair, and not have asked herself a question?

  — She couldn’t afford to know the answer.

  — To my mind, Doctor, that is the undivined riddle of the sphinx, seemingly solved so lightly by the queen’s second husband. He answered from the general but failed to perceive how it applied to him. His very triumph blinded him to the answer’s glaring significance. In that sense Oedipus and his queen were alike. You cannot so easily set aside what you are, which is no more and no less than a human being. And you cannot play fast and loose with your own human nature without paying a price. The blank mind. (And she so shrewd by nature.) That is what Jocasta was pay
ing with. The apparent erasure of the terrible secret she had buried inside her, entombed alongside her violently murdered, meticulously forgotten first husband.

  I hear the guardian of the tea tray beginning to snuffle. The sacred vessel is about to arrive.

  — I can send it away again.

  — I’ll be back, Doctor.

  12

  Royal Free Hospital, 20 December 1938

  — Where am I?

  — In hospital.

  — And you are…God in heaven, you again!

  — Another operation to your jaw, Doctor?

  — Schur was to remove a sliver more of bone to ease the pressure. Hasn’t worked. The pain is disagreeably severe.

  — I thought you might like company. But feel free to throw me out.

  — No, please. I’d welcome any distraction. Talk to me. I can’t say this to my wife or my daughter – but I begin to feel I can’t take much more of this infernal pain.

  — Shall I go on with the story I was telling? Or have you had enough of that too?

  — No, no. Rehearsing it again has kept me alive these past months. You know, my friend, that story has been the linchpin of my work. My life’s work. Hearing it from you, from the horse’s mouth, is like…

  — …a gift from the gods, Dr Freud?

  — You took the words out of my mouth – not the most salubrious part of my person at present! Please continue. I may be reduced to only half a mouth but I’m all ears.

  — Time passed…

  — How much time?

  — Since Oedipus was made King of Thebes? Eighteen years. And then one day the great sickness came – which is when it all began to get nasty.

  — What manner of sickness?

  — Doctor, the account does not make comfortable hearing.

  — My dear man, I am qualified in medicine and my own life has inured me to most horrors. You may safely tell me.

  — It began with a burning sensation in the head, inflamed eyes and bleeding from the throat and tongue. Then chest pains and coughing, followed by acute stomach cramps and vomiting. The skin became inflamed, breaking out into pustules and ulcers. The body was not hot, nor was there any pallor, but internally there was a feeling of burning so that the sufferers couldn’t bear the touch even of the lightest linen but were desperate to go naked and plunge into cold water. The disease then descended into the bowels, producing violent ulceration and uncontrollable diarrhoea. Most died on the seventh or eighth day. It was as well. Those who survived usually lost their sight. Or suffered from strange visionary disturbances.

  — You paint a hideous picture. I am grateful to have been spared the experience.

  — You can see why it might have exercised the king and queen. They were a successful team. Judicious. Parental. So it was fitting that Oedipus should appear before his anxious people addressing them, with proper concern, as his “children”. He cared for his subjects and was distressed at the numbers dying every day in his city; a city that, eighteen years earlier, in his state of distraught despair had taken him into its heart. He was a good ruler, too: assiduous, conscientious, fair-minded, provided he got his way. The one attribute he lacked was patience. He couldn’t let be.

  — I sympathise!

  — So he became possessed with trying to find out the whys and wherefores of the pestilence, rather than simply attending to what was needed, practically, to be done. Which is why he sent his wife’s brother, Creon, to Delphi in an effort to discover what lay behind it.

  I do wonder about that, Doctor. Was it, do you suppose, an attempt to ablate that other Delphic pronouncement, the one that had set him off in frantic flight to Thebes? The responsible ruler piously addressing his city’s welfare at the shrine of all-seeing Apollo to cover the appallingly shameful memory of what he had been told there? I suspect he didn’t know quite what he was doing when he sent Creon off to Delphi. But one thing is plain: he was flaunting his power. I am Oedipus, solver of the sphinx’s riddle and I am in charge not only of my city but also of my wife’s brother. So when his brother-in-law came back with the news that to mend the city’s ills the former king’s murderer must be found and rooted out…

  — …On the principle of set a thief to catch a thief?

  — Exactly, Doctor: deal with one pollutant to remedy another. Well satisfied with his resourcefulness and efficiency, King Oedipus didn’t examine the message too closely. For it was Creon’s account of Apollo’s word that was given out: it reached the king second, or rather third, hand. That fatal indirection: the sphinx’s legacy. Had King Oedipus gone in person to question the oracle he might have heard a different solution.

  — Or heard the solution differently?

  — You cannot pass on oracular word without affecting the sense. But Oedipus’s experience at Delphi had not been a comfortable one; and Creon’s account of the needed cure was compelling. It gave the king a fresh object to pit his wits, and his will, against. And it offered a new occasion for success: find the polluting source of the current crisis, extirpate the murderer who was the cause of the shocking contagion which had taken all those years to catch up with Thebes, and once again become the city’s vaunted saviour, the hero of the hour. He needed success the way I needed peace and quiet. It was lifeblood to him.

  — Because of how he started out. It is all in our origins.

  — As you have shown, Dr Freud. And of course Oedipus, the man from Corinth, could hardly be held responsible for the baffling delay in investigating the regicide. He was the alien, the stranger, the glamorous foreigner who happened by at a point of crisis and rescued Thebes from its doom. He could not be held responsible for the tardiness in pursuing his predecessor’s killer. Or killers. That was the story we were told: a band of robbers had waylaid Laios on his way to Delphi and slaughtered him and all his followers. Save one man.

  I first heard about this survivor when Creon hauled me in for questioning by the king. “So, you are the famous seer who, with no eyes, ‘sees’ the word of the gods in the shriek of birds?”

  I made some mute gesture. But a weight of despondency fell upon me. Had he thought to consult me over the plague, I should not have counselled hurrying off to Delphi. It is true that plagues were Apollo’s province. But even plagues pass. As do the moods of double-tongued Apollo, who, as I say, is nothing if not contrary.

  — Of course neither “Apollo” nor any other “god” was responsible: it was a mortally contagious virus passed on through inadequate hygiene.

  — If you prefer, Doctor. In any event, my silence provoked the king. I was to learn this was a man who could not stand a lack of response.

  “So,” and I could hear the barely suppressed irritation in his voice, “you who are alleged to see so much, since there is now urgency in the matter, tell us what you see of the death of King Laios”.

  Which is when I saw it again: the place in Phokis where three roads meet. And a young man with copper-coloured hair and a pine staff, standing where the road, if you are coming from the direction of Thebes, branches to Daulis; and right in front of the young man, a wagon, and in it a red-bearded man, with a broken nose and an ugly goad in his hand.

  And at the same time I sensed the faintest tremor in the space beside the king. A woman’s voice spoke. A cool voice, with the ready habit of assuagement in it. “Dearest heart, there is nothing the seer can tell us that we don’t already know. The king and all his retainers were killed by a robber band.”

  “And you tell me that nothing was done to apprehend the assassins?”

  “Dear one, it was in another country, and besides…”

  There was the sphinx, she meant to imply. That great excuse for inaction. But he was on to that, fast. “What could matter more than the death of a king?”

  Yes, yes, I know, I know what you’re about to say, Dr Freud. It seems incredible that the two of them, and they so close, should never have discussed the matter before. But, truly, I believe they had not.

  — In fact I was
going to say that this, if anything, gives the game away. A conspiracy of silence!

  — Neither wanted to rock the boat, risk the happiness they had found so unexpectedly after their several alarms and misfortunes. You, Doctor, who deal in what people set aside, bury, overlook, avoid, should understand.

  — Certainly. But to ignore is not the same as ignorance.

  — Indeed not, as you have shown. But let me go on with the story.

  The queen continued in her placating tone with that note of seductive charm, “My darling, we had a new king …” But if that tone had worked in the past her consort chose to disregard it now.

  “Nothing could be of more importance to a new king than the murder of his predecessor. For the gods’ sake, Jocasta, at any time the murderers might choose to attack me!” There was such supreme confidence in his voice, Doctor. Recalling it makes me want to weep. “Speak up, old man! Tell us what you see.”

  There was a clearer menace in the tone now. But I prevaricated, turning my blind eyes to the queen. “Madam, forgive my faulty memory, how did the report reach you if all the king’s retainers were also killed?”

  Again, the faintest perturbation in the air from her direction but the voice remained steady and assured. “Oh, there was one who survived. He brought back the news.”

  “And where is this man?” The king again. Eager, pressing. I could sense the queen looking in my direction.

  “My Lord,” I said, summoning a rusty diplomacy, “it seems from what Her Majesty has said that this matter was solved long ago. Perhaps we should leave things be. Maybe…”

  I was going to suggest that Apollo’s anger might be averted by other means than this. Murderers had come to us at Delphi and bathed their whole bodies in Castalia’s cleansing waters. Apollo was there to aid as well as enforce the expiation of murder. But I was forestalled.

  “Imbecile! The oracle has spoken.” Which, when you reflect on what he himself had heard at Delphi, was rash.

  “Perhaps the seer is right, brother.” A new voice, with less overt authority than the other two. Correct, urbane, a politician’s voice.